What is Growth Hacking?

There’s a lot of excitement around the concept of “Growth Hacking,” especially how it relates to content marketing and search engine optimization. While it’s great that many companies are taking growth more seriously, it’s important to focus on building sustainable companies. Understanding how growth hacking really works and recognizing when an opportunity arises is critical.

When talking about growth, milestones aren't as important as discovering whether you have a clear path to sustainability. It doesn't matter if you have 5 clients or 5,000 -- whatever you do to get your start, that’s how you should proceed.

What is Growth Hacking?

Growth hacking is a process for acquiring and engaging clients by combining traditional marketing skills with product development. Historically, marketing and product development were at cross-purposes. Marketing groups would spend significant amounts of money to attract clients but fail to get development resources to build critical elements like landing pages and usable content.

Conversely, product development experts would frequently build what they believed clients wanted without understanding the impact of their work. This concept of "growth hacking" represents the realization that focusing on understanding your clients and the ways in which they discover your service enables you to build features that will help you attract and retain more customers, rather than aimlessly spending marketing dollars.

Basics of Growth Hacking

Growth hackers look for quick and unconventional victories. They adopt any method, however foreign to their industry, to reach their target audience and pull them in. In short, it is a strategy used by start-ups to reach a large audience quickly. Growth hacking is generally viewed as a marketing shortcut allowing you to temporarily accomplish goals faster.

Examples

Here are a few examples of growth hacking methods existing companies have used:

1. Hotmail: In 1996, one month after its launch, Hotmail already have 20,000 users. Instead of exhausting its entire marketing budget on expensive advertising, Hotmail decided to use its already existing customer base to spread the word. By adding the tagline “Get your FREE email at Hotmail” to the outgoing messages of existing users, Hotmail was able to grow its user base exponentially.
2. PayPal: In the late 1990s, PayPal noticed the popularity of its services surging on the popular auction site eBay. Back then, PayPal was not integrated into the site and sellers were required to code their pages manually to accept PayPal. Noticing this niche, PayPal inked a deal with eBay to be an official payment method, leveraging eBay web traffic and allowing the online bank’s popularity to explode.
3. Gmail: When Google’s email service, Gmail, first debuted, Hotmail was the clear leader for online-based email services. But Gmail relied upon a well-known growth hack in the beginning that created an overwhelming demand for the new service: exclusivity. By empowering its limited user base with VIP status by allowing them to invite a certain number of new users, Google hit a home run. It wasn’t long before friends, family and co-workers were hounding for an invite.

While these are a few great growth hacking examples, they prove growth hacking is nothing new. In fact, while the term "growth hacking" was originally coined in 2010, the practice is as old as marketing itself.

Growth Hacking Myths

Anytime an idea like growth hacking comes to the fore, people get some outlandish ideas. Here are three growth hacking myths of which you should be aware.

1. Growth hacking is a list of cheats: This is wrong. There is no set list of ways to hack growth. It is a mindset where you are open to new and unconventional short-term strategies.
2. Growth hacking is a quick way to solve problems: Not necessarily. Companies need sustainable growth, and growth hacking does not deliver sustainability- it delivers quick boosts to your brand’s visibility. This can lead to big fixes, but not with any formulaic certainty.
3. Growth hacking is new: Not at all. The term is new. But people have been growth hacking for as long as advertising has existed.

Growth Hacking Best Practices

Not all uses of growth hacking are admirable. Many businesses use the tactic to mislead customers. By sticking to these best practices, you have a better chance of retaining the respect of your clients and customers -- as well as avoiding lawsuits. Here are seven Growth Hacking best practices:

1. Be accessible

A good way to stay on your customers’ good side is to be available when they have a question or concern. Don’t leave them guessing.

2. Listen to your users

It is no good being available if you don’t listen. Give your audience your ear. Being heard is a basic human need.

3. Find your niche

Do what you’re good at and keep it up.

4. Prospect nurturing with a difference

Growth hacking is about innovation and inspiration in marketing. To do it right, you need to find an idea that excites you.

5. Develop scalable tactics

If you find a hack that works, ask yourself if it’s a strategy you can maintain as your firm grows. If so, embrace it.

6. Use alternative platforms

Different types of people frequent different parts of the web. Having a presence on more than one is important to meeting your potential.

7. Embrace change

With time, technology, culture, trends, and norms will all change. Be flexible enough to change with them, or you will be left behind.

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